


Agent-of-Influence

by linguamortua



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Canon Era, Deception, Espionage, F/M, Marriage, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 21:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12826107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: An intriguing proposition comes Diana's way; now all she has to do is talk Stephen around.





	Agent-of-Influence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ingreatwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingreatwaters/gifts).



Diana finds him in the library, dreadful wig abandoned on the table and a smudge of best India ink on his nose. His hands are making their crabbed way through the pages of a ledger, and from time to time he pauses to make a note in handwriting which, she knows from experience, still bears witness to the events he will not fully describe to her. For a moment her heart skips a little at the sight of him—and then she remembers that she is trying to be cross.

When she shifts her weight from one tired foot to another, her new Parisian boots punishing her for her trek around the city, he hears her, and looks up. His disapproving squint is magnified by his little round blue-glassed spectacles.

‘Villiers,’ he says, croaking like an old crow. ‘Must you hop about so? You are human, I notice, and not _passeridae_.’

‘I’m sure you’re insulting me,’ Diana says, making her way across the floor and taking the seat across the table from him. ‘Have you been here since breakfast? I have positively worn out the pavement looking for you, you know.’

‘Peace, Villiers—you have no idea how I crave it, and this work demands it.’ He waves a hand and almost upsets the ink bottle. Diana liberates it to her side of the table.

‘What is the point of being married at all, if—and you know, Stephen, darling, you should call me Maturin, now, if anything—’

Stephen snorts in possible amusement and scratches another note on his paper.

‘—anyhow, it’s no use playing the fox with me and going to ground. We will have this out.’ She raps on the table for emphasis and a grey old coot at the next table hisses at her to be quiet.

‘You are causing a stir again, wife.’ He drops his voice very low. ‘And I remind you once again that it is a _secret service_ , secrecy which your present volume threatens as far away as Moscow.’

‘Damn it, Stephen,’ Diana begins in a whisper, but the man next to them, exhibiting the aural acuity of a bat, exclaims, ‘Madam, please!’ 

‘As if he never heard a woman swear!’ Diana exclaims as she sweeps down the library steps with her hand securely tucked into Stephen’s wiry elbow. They merge into a noisy crowd, and she bends towards Stephen’s ear. ‘Does this suit you now, dear?’

‘Quite—although it would suit me better to postpone this conversation indefinitely. Whatever gave you the absurd notion of becoming a spy?’

Diana attempts a withering glance, but Stephen’s gaze is fixed on the pavement in front of him.

‘A gentleman from the Admiralty, who I met at Lady H’s, made overtures.’ She feels Stephen bristle. ‘Oh, not like _that_. I am terribly respectable now. He seemed to think it very strange that nobody had asked me before. He said that my—and don’t think me vain—that my looks and languages might be helpful in the pursuit of information.’

‘You do nothing but prattle, Villiers, it is the most womanish thing imaginable. It is my impression that spies are discreet.’

‘What is that delightful smell?’ Diana asks suddenly, hoping for a reprieve.

‘The cooking of street pies, the contents of which medical science may never identify,’ says Stephen waspishly. ‘You have never once eaten such a pie, and I know very well you have no intention of developing a taste for them.’

‘I _am_ hungry, though. May we dine, or must I submit to my lecture first?’ Stephen mumbles something about gluttony, but he steers them along a series of narrow streets to a respectable-looking inn, and they take a private room. It is rather small, and papered in dark red in the old-fashioned manner. Some of the crockery does not quite match other pieces. Had Diana not been inured to greater discomfort, she might have complained. She wonders if she should complain a little anyway, just to throw Stephen off the scent. When he is pressed he becomes so devilish stubborn—sometimes, she finds, to serves better to pretend that she is entirely disinterested in something.

‘You have not mentioned the smell of mothballs once, nor the cavernous crack in that teapot. What is with you?’

Diana smiles, cursing inwardly.

‘Nothing at all, dear—except that I don’t see anything wrong in going to France and Italy and Greece and other agreeable places, and saying some untruths to a horde of tiresome men who would like to invade us.’

‘Amoral thing.’ Stephen pours her tea.

‘Why on earth should I need morals? I have lovely manners, Stephen, and believe me when I tell you that men don’t care a jot about one’s morals, or ethics, or philosophies.’ She thinks of Sir Joseph, a friendly, rotund fellow, and how terribly interested he was in her opinions. And how polite, but direct, like one of Cousin Jack’s jolly sailors, almost. ‘You mustn’t worry. It isn’t as though I’d be fighting.’

‘And who was the gentleman who presented you with the idea?’ Stephen asks.

‘If you are setting up to be jealous—’

‘Tell me, for I am with child to know precisely what fellow is running around recruiting women for espionage.’

‘Oh, a nice old man—a Joseph.’ Stephen drops a spoon on the floor and dives after it, wig knocking itself askew against the tablecloth.

‘The naturalist,’ he says, and he sounds very oddly strained. 

‘I believe he said some incomprehensible Latin words about moths—or were they butterflies?’

‘I know him,’ says Stephen, sounding bewildered. Diana’s heart flutters, and she swoops across the table to clasp his crooked hands in hers. His fingers are a little cold. 

‘I’ve hurt you,’ she says. She forgets sometimes how unworldly he is. Poor Stephen—spies and lies and agents of influence must represent to him a whole sphere of unnerving shadows. He is a man of knowledge and theories, not dissembling and backstabbing. When he came back to her, a pale and broken thing with twisted fingers, she recalled thinking how ghastly it must have been for a medical man, a scientist, to experience such violence. Cousin Jack had said as much to her. 

‘You surprised me,’ Stephen says, rallying. They are both surprised a moment later when a girl comes in with a roasted duck and sundries, and a coffeepot. They sit frozen, waiting for her to leave, and Diana has time to gather her thoughts.

‘When I married you, you promised that you would never try to control me.’

‘Wild horses won’t be bridled,’ Stephen says. ‘I remember. Dear God—I had not imagined that you would take up against Napoleon, though.’

‘Still, dear,’ she says, feeling very cruel, but feeling also the brisk beat of her excited heart like a wild bird’s wings against a cage. ‘Still.’ She pauses and thinks about Mrs Jenning’s oldest daughter. ‘Women die all the time, you know. We die in childbed.’

‘It is my prerogative to worry, if you like.’

‘I don’t like,’ she says, and tries a light, flirtatious little laugh that falls very flat. They both know, now, that there is no more conversation to be had on the topic, and that Diana will do as pleases her. 

‘Whatever you do, Diana,’ Stephen says very slowly, his fingers tightening on hers, ‘only be careful. Be very, very careful.’


End file.
